We use the standard notation for a system of simultaneous
linear
equations:
where A is the coefficient matrix,
b is the right-hand side,
and x is the solution.
In (3.2) A is assumed to be a square matrix of order n,
but some of the individual routines allow A to be rectangular.
If there are several right-hand sides
we write
where the columns of B are the individual right-hand sides,
and the columns of
X are the corresponding solutions.
The basic task is to compute X, given A and B.

If A is upper or lower triangular, (3.2) can be solved by a
straightforward
process of backward or forward substitution.
Otherwise, the solution is obtained after first factorizing A as a
product of
triangular matrices (and possibly also a diagonal matrix or permutation
matrix).

The form of the factorization depends on the properties of the matrix
A.
ScaLAPACK provides routines for the following types of matrices, based on
the stated factorizations:

If A is m-by-n with bwl subdiagonals and bwu superdiagonals,
the factorization is
where P and Q are permutation matrices and L and U are banded
lower and upper triangular matrices, respectively.

general diagonally dominant-like band matrices including general tridiagonal matrices (LU factorization without pivoting):

A diagonally dominant-like matrix
is one for which it is known
a priori that pivoting for stability is NOT required in the LU
factorization of the matrix. Diagonally dominant matrices themselves are
examples of diagonally dominant-like matrices.

If A is m-by-n with bwl subdiagonals and bwu superdiagonals,
the factorization is
where P is a permutation matrix and L and U are banded lower
and upper triangular matrices respectively.

where P is a permutation matrix and U and L are bidiagonal upper and
lower triangular matrices respectively.

Note: In the banded and tridiagonal factorizations
(PxDBTRF, PxDTTRF, PxGBTRF, PxPBTRF, and PxPTTRF), the resulting
factorization is not the same factorization as returned from
LAPACK. Additional permutations are performed on the matrix for the
sake of parallelism.
Further details of the algorithmic implementations can be found
in [32].

The factorization for a general diagonally dominant-like tridiagonal
matrix is like that for
a general diagonally dominant-like band matrix with bwl = 1 and bwu = 1.
Band matrices use the band
storage scheme described in section 4.4.3.

While the primary use of a matrix factorization is to solve a system
of equations, other related tasks are provided as well.
Wherever possible, ScaLAPACK provides routines to perform each of these
tasks
for each type of matrix and storage scheme (see
table 3.6).
The following list relates the tasks
to the last three characters of the name of the corresponding
computational routine:

PxyyTRF:

factorize (obviously not needed for triangular matrices);

PxyyTRS:

use the factorization (or the matrix A itself if it is
triangular) to
solve (3.3) by forward or backward substitution;

PxyyCON:

estimate the reciprocal of the condition number
;
Higham's modification [81] of Hager's method [72]
is used to estimate (not provided for band or
tridiagonal matrices);

PxyyRFS:

compute bounds on the error in the computed solution (returned
by the PxyyTRS routine), and
refine the solution to reduce the backward error (see below) (not
provided for band or tridiagonal matrices);

PxyyTRI:

use the factorization (or the matrix A itself if it is
triangular)
to compute (not provided for band matrices, because the inverse
does not in general preserve bandedness);

PxyyEQU:

compute scaling factors to equilibrateA
(not provided for band, tridiagonal, or triangular matrices). These
routines do not actually scale
the matrices: auxiliary routines PxLAQyy may be used for that purpose --
see the code of the driver routines PxyySVX for sample usage.

Note that some of the above routines depend on the output of others:

PxyyTRF:

may work on an equilibrated matrix produced by
PxyyEQU and PxLAQyy, if yy is one of {GE, PO};

PxyyTRS:

requires the factorization returned by PxyyTRF;

PxyyCON:

requires the norm of the original matrix A and the
factorization returned by PxyyTRF;

PxyyRFS:

requires the original matrices A and B, the factorization
returned by PxyyTRF, and the solution X returned by PxyyTRS;

PxyyTRI:

requires the factorization returned by PxyyTRF.

The RFS (``refine solution'') routines perform iterative
refinement
and compute backward and forward error bounds for the solution.
Iterative refinement is done in the same precision as the input data.
In particular, the residual is not computed with extra precision,
as has been traditionally done.
The benefit of this procedure is discussed in section 6.5.